Fun with friends, beloved despite flaws
Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews
“yes, after almost 3 years it's still buggy as heck, but it's Ark and I will keep playing as long as I am able.”
Steam review · 1056.5 h played ↗
ARK: Survival Ascended
Worth buying? What 300 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 300 Steam reviews actually say.
Mixed · 60%Mixed · 60%Studio Wildcard, Grove Street Games, Instinct Games2023Survival · Base Building · Adventure
The verdict
A huge, addictive dino-taming survival sandbox with beautiful visuals, held back by heavy hardware demands, bugs, DLC monetization and huge slow updates. Skip it on a weak PC or small SSD.
Great for
Solo, PvE or small-group players who love taming and building and have a strong PC and big SSD
Main risk
Poor optimization and crashes, plus near-daily huge updates that eat disk space and time
What changed in the last 30 days
156 recent reviews
Many reviews from the last 30 days complain about updates arriving every day or two, needing 200GB+ free space and taking 1-5 hours to patch. Likely a recent patch cadence problem.
156 recent reviews
What players love
Addictive taming, building and exploring
Mentioned in ~1 in 6 positive reviews
“I still love this game in single-player or PVE with friends. It has an addictive game loop that keeps me coming back for every map release”
Steam review · 2446.2 h played ↗
Stunning visuals
Mentioned in ~1 in 6 positive reviews
“The game is stunningly beautiful thanks to the engine upgrade”
Steam review · 173.4 h played ↗
Lots of content and new dinos
Mentioned in ~1 in 12 positive reviews
“there is many times more content here, and surviving is much more interesting than in the old Ark”
Steam review · translated from Russian · 90.6 h played ↗
Great for solo, PvE or private servers
Mentioned in ~1 in 17 positive reviews
“I play on a private server so it's more relaxed.”
Steam review · 66 h played ↗
Quality-of-life and building improvements
Mentioned in ~1 in 19 positive reviews
“they overhauled the building system, and I personally like it way better now.”
Steam review · 65.5 h played ↗
What players complain about
Huge, slow updates needing double disk space
Mentioned in ~2 in 5 negative reviews
“A 200-300MB patch should not take 1-3 hours to apply on modern hardware.”
Steam review · 61.6 h played ↗
Poor optimization and low fps
Mentioned in ~2 in 5 negative reviews
“this game has the most abysmal performance and optimization I have every seen.”
Steam review · 23.7 h played ↗
Aggressive DLC and paid mods monetization
Mentioned in ~1 in 3 negative reviews
“I do enjoy the game, but am constantly annoyed by the frequent pushes to buy more things.”
Steam review · 8.5 h played ↗
Bugs, glitches and crashes
Mentioned in ~1 in 4 negative reviews
“Buggy, crashes constantly, and terrible single player experience.”
Steam review · 568 h played ↗
Publisher greed and devs prioritizing new content over fixes
Mentioned in ~1 in 5 negative reviews
“they have been more interested in releasing new paid content rather than fixing the old content.”
Steam review · 568 h played ↗
Cheaters and pay-to-win on official PvP
Mentioned in ~1 in 17 negative reviews
“It is filled to the BRIM with hackers and cheaters on official servers, and the developers do absolutely NOTHING to combat the cheaters.”
Steam review · 966.4 h played ↗
System requirements
From the Steam store page
Steam Deck: VerifiedController support180 GB
Minimum
OSWindows 10/11 with updates
ProcessorAMD Ryzen 5 2600X, Intel Core i7-6800K
Memory16 GB RAM
GraphicsAMD Radeon RX 5600 XT, NVIDIA GeForce 1080
Storage180 GB available space
Recommended
OSWindows 10/11 with updates
ProcessorAMD Ryzen 5 3600X, Intel i5-10600K
Memory32 GB RAM
GraphicsAMD Radeon RX 6800, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
Storage180 GB available space
OSWindows 10/11 with updates
ProcessorAMD Ryzen 5 2600X, Intel Core i7-6800K
Memory16 GB RAM
GraphicsAMD Radeon RX 5600 XT, NVIDIA GeForce 1080
Storage180 GB available space
More games to check
Other games we’ve read the reviews for
Palworld
Very Positive · 95%+ Pals as workers and base building
− Late-game grind
analyzed 12 h ago
7 Days to Die
Very Positive · 87%+ Great with friends in co-op
− Devs keep changing and removing mechanics
analyzed 4 min ago
Dune: Awakening
Mostly Positive · 72%+ Authentic Dune atmosphere and lore
− Loss of gear or base to bugs and decay
analyzed 11 min ago
Dying Light
Overwhelmingly Positive+ Smooth, satisfying parkour
− Clunky combat and enemy scaling
analyzed 13 min ago
Weekly digest
Fresh games worth a look, in your inbox
The most interesting games we’ve just analyzed, once a week.Once a week we send the most interesting games we’ve just analyzed: the verdict, top pros and cons, and what changed. No spam.
One email a week · unsubscribe in one click